Friday, February 23, 2007

Poetry Friday #2

All sorts of poetry-related thingy things for you this fine and frisky Friday morn.

First up, another poem you've ne'er seen before. Me madre explains it thusly:

"Prairie Home Companion Joke Show was on last week -- it was listening to one of those years ago that made me notice the recurring words "joke," "blonde," "bar," "lightbulb" and "rabbi." A sestina doesn't rhyme; it takes the six end-words of the first line and reuses them so that if the first stanza is 123456, the second stanza is 615243 and so on until they've worked back around, then you have to reuse them all in three lines at the end -- and, if possible, keep anyone from noticing it's a sestina."

Enjoy!

Tell Me If You’ve Heard This One

Surprise is what we value in a jokewe think, a different reason for the chickento cross, a deeper basement to the blonde’sbemusement, some new group screwing in a lightbulb,odder animal walks into a bar,the final wise word from the patient rabbi.

A priest, a Baptist minister and a rabbiwalk into a bar. Barkeep says “Is this a joke?”Sure, and a good one, a world where every baris just as apt to host a talking chickenas an ecumenical conference, but no lightbulbever flashing on above the blonde.

It’s compensation, making fun of blondes,just like giving the punchline to the rabbi.The proud are humbled, the oppressed triumph, the lightbulbgoes on – we get it, and laugh. A joketurns power upside down until a chickencan be the hero and walk into a bar.

And everyone seems happy here, barnone, not just the always-welcome blondebut those who’d be justified in feeling chickenabout walking in, the solitary rabbistranded amid goyim who wouldn’t get the jokeshe tells at home, grateful that these lightbulbs

are dim. You’d have to be a pretty dim bulbnot to know that everyone in this barhas been the butt of the lowest kind of joke,history’s hotfoot, fate’s yanked-out chair. Blondestook over one dark night and riddled the Polaks, the rabbi,Cletus hazed Rastus, but yo’ mama fried that chicken

so good everybody was happy, even the chicken.It’s verbal potluck: Luigi brings a bulbof garlic, knock-knock the drummer delivers pizza, the rabbiadds a little schmaltz, everyone in the baris flaunting their roots, eventually even the blonde,The melting pot’s a plate, a glass, a joke.

“Rabbi, how many moths to screw in a lightbulb?”asks the blonde chick at bar, “Only two.” “No joke?”“But like us, you’ve got to wonder how they got in there.”